WBEZ | Filmhttp://www.wbez.org/sections/film
Latest from WBEZ Chicago Public RadioenOprah's Harpo Studios in Chicago to close in December http://www.wbez.org/news/culture/oprahs-harpo-studios-chicago-close-december-111649
<img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://llnw.wbez.org/main-images/harpo.jpg" alt="" /><p><p>Oprah Winfrey will close Harpo Studios in Chicago, where she filmed &quot;The Oprah Winfrey Show&quot; for more than 20 years, this December, and will transition production for her cable network to a studio in California.</p><p>Harpo Studios and the Oprah Winfrey Network made the announcement Tuesday. OWN recently moved into a new studio in West Hollywood, California, and work currently done at Harpo Studios in Chicago will now be done there.</p><p>Winfrey sold the Harpo Studios property in Chicago&#39;s West Loop neighborhood to a developer last year for about $32 million. She said in a statement Tuesday that Harpo Studios has been a &quot;blessing&quot; in her life and she&#39;s now &quot;looking ahead&quot; to inhabiting her California studio.</p><p>The city named the street outside Harpo Studios &quot;Oprah Winfrey Way&quot; in 2011.</p></p>Tue, 03 Mar 2015 13:46:00 -0600http://www.wbez.org/news/culture/oprahs-harpo-studios-chicago-close-december-111649Academy Award fever sweeps public radiohttp://www.wbez.org/news/culture/academy-award-fever-sweeps-public-radio-111590
<p><p>The 87th Academy Awards are tonight, but if you&#39;ve been listening to WBEZ you already know that. Public media had film fever lately, publishing in-depth interviews and stories on the filmmaking process. Here&#39;s a selection of our favorite interviews with Oscar-contenders, stories about the film industry and analysis from thoughtful critics.</p><p><span style="font-size: 24px;">Best Director Nominees</span></p><p>Our own <a href="http://nerdettepodcast.com/listen">Nerdette Podcast</a> had a wonderful interview with <em>Boyhood</em> director Richard Linklater. He explained how his approach to the film was informed by novel-writing and nerded out about the Ingmar Bergman film, <em>Fanny and Alexander</em>, &quot;I realized this is the greatest film about that view of the magical thinking of a kid.&quot;</p><p><iframe frameborder="no" height="100" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/191621846&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_artwork=false" width="100%"></iframe></p><div class="image-insert-image "><img alt="" class="image-original_image" src="http://www.wbez.org/system/files/styles/original_image/llo/insert-images/KeatonBirdman.png" style="float: left; height: 200px; width: 300px;" title="Michael Keaton and Alejandro González Iñárritu (Courtesy of Fox Searchlight)" /><em>Birdman</em> director Alejandro González Iñárritu told <a href="http://www.scpr.org/programs/the-frame/2014/09/01/39126/birdman-alejandro-gonzlez-inarritu-michael-keaton/" target="_blank">Southern California Public Radio&#39;s <em>The Frame</em></a> he felt Michael Keaton&rsquo;s performance was &ldquo;almost a miracle.&rdquo;</div><blockquote><p>&quot;During the writing process, I had Michael Keaton as one of the highest possibilities, but then when I finished I knew that he was the best. Not only because he will bring the authority to really talk about what we talk about when we talk about superheroes. That would be Michael, because he, in a way, is the pioneer of that. That will bring the authority, a kind of a meta-dialogue to the film.</p><p>&quot;At the same time, I always have considered Michael Keaton to be a phenomenal actor because he navigates drama and comedy. He has been the bad guy, the funny guy, and I needed somebody who can really navigate those two genres and I think few actors can do that. What he did is extraordinarily difficult, honestly. I think I have worked with great actors, but what he did it was almost a miracle, I have to say.&quot;</p></blockquote><div class="image-insert-image "><img alt="" class="image-original_image" src="http://www.wbez.org/system/files/styles/original_image/llo/insert-images/AP722953903556.jpg" style="float: right; height: 200px; width: 300px;" title="Ralph Fiennes and Wes Anderson (AP/Thibault Camus)" />Writer/director Wes Anderson <a href="http://www.scpr.org/programs/the-frame/2015/02/10/41493/wes-anderson-says-the-grand-budapest-hotels-succes/" target="_blank">told <em>The Frame</em></a> that the success of <em>The Grand Budapest Hotel</em> was a &ldquo;total mystery.&rdquo;</div><blockquote><div>&ldquo;I could come up with some notion, but it&#39;s complete guess work ... I had one a few years ago, [&quot;The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou&quot;], that I thought, This is an ocean-going adventure story, it&#39;s the most commercial idea I&#39;ve ever had...[but] almost no one went to see it. I thought I was making a kind of Spielberg movie. The world did not share my perspective on this. Up until the moment there&#39;s a real public screening &mdash; and it&#39;s not a test screening, the movie is finished and we are at a film festival&nbsp; or something &mdash; I have absolutely no sense of how it&#39;s going to go over at all. And really, even after that, I tend not to.&rdquo;</div></blockquote><p>While Benedict Cumberbatch has recieved most of the attention over <em>The Imitation Game</em>, director Morten Tlydum has also been nominated for Best Director on his first English-language feature. He <a href="http://www.scpr.org/programs/the-frame/2014/09/02/39151/telluride-the-imitation-game-screenwriter-and-dire/" target="_blank">told <em>The Frame</em></a>:</p><blockquote><p>&quot;What drew me to the project is that it&#39;s a tribute to people who are different &mdash; who are thinking differently, who [don&#39;t] really fit into the norm, whose ideas are not like anybody&#39;s ideas &mdash; and I think that is so important. We as a society &mdash; we as a species &mdash; if we&#39;re going to move forward, we have to listen to those who think different &mdash; who are not seeing it in the same way as everyone else.&quot;</p></blockquote><p><span style="font-size:24px;">Best Picture Nominees</span></p><p><em>Selma</em> was a favorite for nominations in a number of Oscar categories, but was limited to Best Picture and Best Song. This slight prompted an insightful conversation on WBEZ&#39;s <em>General Admission</em> podcast about the value of making lists about art and how they can starkly show the industry&#39;s lack of diversity.</p><p><iframe frameborder="no" height="100" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/191665733&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_artwork=false" width="100%"></iframe></p><p>The most controversal film among the Best Picture nominees, <em>American Sniper</em> became a central point on <em>Filmspotting</em>&#39;s Oscar preview episode. They looked back to another Clint Eastwood directoral effort for comparison&mdash;<em>Unforgiven.</em></p><p><iframe frameborder="no" height="100" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/190985372&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_artwork=false" width="100%"></iframe></p><p><em>Whiplash</em> writer/director Damien Chazelle <a href="http://www.scpr.org/programs/the-frame/2014/10/09/39765/whiplash-director-damien-chazelle-painful-virtuoso/" target="_blank">told <em>The Frame</em></a> that he was inspired by musicians he knows in real life.</p><blockquote><p>&quot;There are a few musicians that I know who seem on the outside like very asocial or somewhat unemotional people, people who aren&#39;t capable of emotions, and people think they&#39;re very cold inside.</p><p>And they&#39;ll be like that, and then you&#39;ll hear them play their instrument, or you&#39;ll hear the music they write, and you&#39;ll hear emotions come out of that music that you&#39;d never expect coming from that person, and that to me is always this fascinating thing, these people who truly can only communicate through music.</p><p>So I wanted to make a movie about people who live music in that way and compare that to what it&#39;s like in the outside world. You know, a guy who gives his heart and soul to a music school and an instrument and then he goes out to dinner with his family and he&#39;s met with indifference, and what that sort of does to you when your interior passion doesn&#39;t line up with what the world wants from you.&rdquo;</p></blockquote><p><span style="font-size:24px;">Hollywood Jobs</span></p><p>NPR&#39;s <em>Morning Edition</em> contined their ten-year tradition of unleashing Susan Stamberg on Tinseltown backlots for her series &quot;<a href="http://www.npr.org/series/147290803/hollywood-jobs#" target="_blank">Hollywood Jobs</a>.&quot; In this year&#39;s installment Stamberg profiles soundtrack loopers, food stylists, costume designers, location scouts and prop makers.</p><p>In a similar vein, <em>Marketplace </em>learned <a href="http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/logistical-mind-behind-boyhoods-12-year-shoot" target="_blank">what exactly a first assistant director does</a> and did the numbers on the <a href="http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/economy-red-carpet" target="_blank">economy of the red carpet</a>.</p></p>Thu, 19 Feb 2015 11:48:00 -0600http://www.wbez.org/news/culture/academy-award-fever-sweeps-public-radio-111590Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah dieshttp://www.wbez.org/programs/worldview/2015-01-23/saudi-arabias-king-abdullah-dies-111448
<img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://llnw.wbez.org/main-images/King Abdullah.jpg" alt="" /><p><p><span id="docs-internal-guid-03c4e882-17c2-1d25-93e4-be52a7c6de4a">King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has died at the age of 90. </span>His half-brother, Salman, has been confirmed as the new king. We&rsquo;ll take a look at his legacy and his successor with Joseph Kéchichian, a senior writer for <a href="http://gulfnews.com/opinions/columnists/dr-joseph-a-kechichian">Gulf News</a> and the author of several books on Gulf affairs.</p><div class="storify"><iframe allowtransparency="true" frameborder="no" height="750" src="//storify.com/WBEZ/the-death-of-king-abdulla/embed?border=false" width="100%"></iframe><script src="//storify.com/WBEZ/the-death-of-king-abdulla.js?border=false"></script><noscript>[<a href="//storify.com/WBEZ/the-death-of-king-abdulla" target="_blank">View the story "Worldview: The Death of King Abdullah" on Storify</a>]</noscript></div></p>Fri, 23 Jan 2015 09:53:00 -0600http://www.wbez.org/programs/worldview/2015-01-23/saudi-arabias-king-abdullah-dies-111448At the Oscar nominations, it's a good year to be an idiosyncratic manhttp://www.wbez.org/news/culture/oscar-nominations-its-good-year-be-idiosyncratic-man-111405
<img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://llnw.wbez.org/main-images/birdman-1resize-cd7db05b4df1f65214edda519363243bebd71451-s800-c85.jpg" alt="" /><p><p>The Oscar nominations are in (you can see the full list&nbsp;<a href="http://oscar.go.com/nominees?cid=oscars_nominees_announcement_cadillac" target="_blank">here</a>), and&nbsp;<em>Birdman&nbsp;</em>and&nbsp;<em>The Grand Budapest Hotel&nbsp;</em>lead with nine nominations each, followed closely by&nbsp;<em>The Imitation Game&nbsp;</em>with eight. Speaking of eight, this year, eight films will compete for Best Picture:</p><p>1.&nbsp;<em>American Sniper</em>, starring Bradley Cooper, based on the memoir of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle.</p><p>2.&nbsp;<em>Boyhood</em>, Richard Linklater&#39;s 12-year chronicle of the life of a boy from kindergarten to college.</p><p>3.&nbsp;<em>Birdman</em>, starring Michael Keaton as an actor who once played a superhero and attempts a comeback on Broadway.</p><p>4.&nbsp;<em>The Grand Budapest Hotel</em>, Wes Anderson&#39;s offbeat but meticulously drawn story of a concierge played by Ralph Fiennes and his young protege.</p><p>5.&nbsp;<em>The Imitation Game</em>, liberally adapted from the actual life of Alan Turing, the mathematician who broke Germany&#39;s Enigma Code during World War II and was later prosecuted for homosexuality.</p><p>6.&nbsp;<em>The Theory Of Everything</em>, about the marriage and early career of scientist Stephen Hawking.</p><p>7.&nbsp;<em>Whiplash</em>, the tense tale of a drummer played by Miles Teller facing off against a teacher played by veteran actor J.K. Simmons.</p><p>8.&nbsp;<em>Selma</em>, Ava DuVernay&#39;s dramatization of the events surrounding the Selma civil rights marches of 1964 and the development of the Voting Rights Act.</p><p>Lead actors nominated include Steve Carell for&nbsp;<em>Foxcatcher</em>, Bradley Cooper for<em>American Sniper</em>, Benedict Cumberbatch for&nbsp;<em>The Imitation Game</em>, Michael Keaton for<em>Birdman</em>, and Eddie Redmayne for&nbsp;<em>The Theory Of Everything</em>. Lead actresses are Marion Cotillard for&nbsp;<em>Two Days One Night</em>, Felicity Jones for&nbsp;<em>The Theory Of Everything</em>, Julianne Moore for&nbsp;<em>Still Alice</em>, Rosamund Pike for&nbsp;<em>Gone Girl</em>, and Reese Witherspoon for&nbsp;<em>Wild</em>.</p><p>On the supporting actor side, the nominees are Robert Duvall for&nbsp;<em>The Judge</em>, Ethan Hawke for&nbsp;<em>Boyhood</em>, Edward Norton for&nbsp;<em>Birdman</em>, Mark Ruffalo for&nbsp;<em>Foxcatcher</em>, and J.K. Simmons &mdash; the expected winner &mdash; for&nbsp;<em>Whiplash</em>. Supporting actresses are Patricia Arquette for&nbsp;<em>Boyhood</em>, Laura Dern for&nbsp;<em>Wild</em>, Keira Knightley for&nbsp;<em>The Imitation Game</em>, Emma Stone for&nbsp;<em>Birdman</em>, and Meryl Streep for&nbsp;<em>Into The Woods</em>.</p><p>Once upon a time, there were five Best Picture nominees each year. The awards for 2009 expanded the field to ten. But in 2011, the number was adjusted again so that it could be anywhere between five and ten, depending on the way the votes fell. For three consecutive years, this has resulted in a nine-film field; this year, it shrinks slightly.</p><p>Every year, there is a capricious quality to the nominations that makes it difficult to draw any particular meaning from them, but there are likely to be a few discussion points floating around today in the wake of these announcements.</p><p style="margin-left:15pt;">-Even for the Oscars &mdash;&nbsp;<em>even for the Oscars&nbsp;</em>&mdash; this is a really, really lot of white people. Every nominated actor in Lead and Supporting categories &mdash; 20 actors in all &mdash; is white.</p><p style="margin-left:15pt;">-Every nominated director is male. Every nominated screenwriter is male.</p><p style="margin-left:15pt;">-Shall we look at story? Every Best Picture nominee here is predominantly about a man or a couple of men, and seven of the eight are about white men, several of whom have similar sort of &quot;complicated genius&quot; profiles, whether they&#39;re real or fictional.</p><p style="margin-left:15pt;">-Particularly in light of these two points, the lack of a Best Director nomination for DuVernay (nominations went to Alejandro González Iñárritu for&nbsp;<em>Birdman</em>, Linklater, Bennett Miller for&nbsp;<em>Foxcatcher</em>, Wes Anderson, and Morten Tyldum) is a disappointment not only for those who admired the film and her careful work behind the camera, but also for those who see her as a figure of hope, considering how rare it is for even films about civil rights to have black directors, and how rare it is for any high-profile project at all to be directed by a woman. Scarcity of opportunity tends to breed much lower tolerance for the whimsical sense that nominations normally have, so that even people who know better than to take Oscar voting to heart feel the sting of what seems like a deliberate snub. (While the film has been criticized for the places were it takes liberties with facts, that issue doesn&#39;t comfortably explain any challenges it faces with voters, given the welcoming of&nbsp;<em>The Imitation Game&nbsp;</em>and<em>Foxcatcher</em>, both of which have been criticized for substantial alterations to the stories of not supporting characters but principal characters.)</p><p style="margin-left:15pt;">-Similarly, David Oyelowo was considered a good bet for his portrayal of Martin Luther King, Jr. in&nbsp;<em>Selma</em>, but the film was shut out of everything except Best Picture and Best Original Song. How a film can qualify for Best Picture and have practically no other elements worthy of recognition is an eternal &mdash; but here, particularly painful &mdash; bit of bafflement. (My friend Bob Mondello will be heartbroken that Timothy Spall was not nominated in the same category for&nbsp;<em>Mr. Turner</em>. Bob also points out that there are zero big box-office films among these eight Best Picture nominees.)</p><p style="margin-left:15pt;">-Christopher Nolan&#39;s<em>&nbsp;Interstellar</em>, perhaps the most anticipated film of the year that doesn&#39;t involve superheroes, grabbed five nominations, but other than the score, they&#39;re all visual/sound &mdash; nothing in writing, acting, directing, or cinematography.</p><p style="margin-left:15pt;">-The strong showing for&nbsp;<em>Boyhood</em>, with six nominations, and&nbsp;<em>The Grand Budapest Hotel</em>, with nine, is awfully nice for those who like to think you can still get Oscar nominations without throwing your film into the fourth quarter (or, in fact, the last couple of weeks) of the year.&nbsp;<em>Boyhood&nbsp;</em>opened all the way back in August, and&nbsp;<em>Grand Budapest&nbsp;</em>in March 2014, which &mdash; for the purpose of this kind of thing &mdash; is practically 2012.</p><p style="margin-left:15pt;">-While the expanded field was once expected to perhaps provide spaces in the Best Picture race for well-regarded blockbusters, kids&#39; films or even superhero movies, that has never taken hold, as it might have this year with something like&nbsp;<em>Guardians Of The Galaxy&nbsp;</em>or&nbsp;<em>The Lego Movie</em>. Instead, it seems to provide space for more of the most traditionally Oscar-ish films to make the cut.</p><p style="margin-left:15pt;">-Wes Anderson is a beloved director for many movie enthusiasts, and this is the first time he&#39;s been nominated outside of writing (for&nbsp;<em>Moonrise Kingdom&nbsp;</em>and&nbsp;<em>The Royal Tenenbaums</em>) and animation (for&nbsp;<em>The Fantastic Mr. Fox</em>). Along with Linklater, he&#39;s perhaps transitioning from an indie writer admired for offbeat storytelling to a maker of Best Picture contenders.</p><p style="margin-left:15pt;">-Four of the eight nominees are dramatizations of real events. That&#39;s well within range for recent years, as prestige pictures have more and more focused on telling stories with various levels of connection to history. And after&nbsp;<em>12 Years A Slave</em>,&nbsp;<em>Lincoln</em>, and&nbsp;<em>The Help</em>, this makes four years in a row that a film focused on the story of race in America has been in the running.</p><p style="margin-left:15pt;">-The documentary&nbsp;<em>Life Itself</em>, about Roger Ebert and made by popular documentary filmmaker Steve James, was one of the most-discussed docs of the year, but was not nominated for Best Documentary Feature. (Nominees were&nbsp;<em>Citizenfour</em>,&nbsp;<em>Finding Vivian Maier</em>,&nbsp;<em>Last Days In Vietnam</em>,&nbsp;<em>The Salt Of The Earth</em>, and&nbsp;<em>Virunga</em>.) It&#39;s going to be received as a significant snub, but honestly, if anyone would have known, at least intellectually, not to take it to heart, it would have been Roger Ebert.</p><p style="margin-left:15pt;">-The extraordinarily popular and well-received&nbsp;<em>The LEGO Movie&nbsp;</em>failed to get a nomination for Best Animated Feature against&nbsp;<em>Big Hero 6</em>,&nbsp;<em>The Boxtrolls</em>,&nbsp;<em>How To Train Your Dragon 2</em>,&nbsp;<em>Song Of The Sea</em>, and&nbsp;<em>The Tale Of Princess Kaguya</em>. Gotta say: nothing against the other nominees, because I haven&#39;t even seen all of them, but I can&#39;t explain that one. At least they nominated the song, so I, for one, will soothe myself with 85 consecutive choruses of &quot;Everything Is Awesome.&quot;</p><p><em>-via <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2015/01/15/377406709/at-the-oscar-nominations-its-a-good-year-to-be-an-idiosyncratic-man">NPR&#39;s Monkey See</a></em></p></p>Thu, 15 Jan 2015 08:48:00 -0600http://www.wbez.org/news/culture/oscar-nominations-its-good-year-be-idiosyncratic-man-111405Obama says Sony should not have pulled film over hackinghttp://www.wbez.org/news/culture/obama-says-sony-should-not-have-pulled-film-over-hacking-111277
<img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://llnw.wbez.org/main-images/AP809914660283_0.jpg" alt="" /><p><p>President Obama called Sony&#39;s decision to pull its film&nbsp;The Interview&nbsp;over a hacking by North Korea a &quot;mistake.&quot;</p><p>&quot;We cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States,&quot; the president&nbsp;<a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/12/19/371881952/live-obamas-year-end-news-conference">said in his year-end news conference</a>.</p><p>He added that he was &quot;sympathetic&quot; about their concerns, but, &quot;I wish they would have spoken to me first.&quot;</p><p>Earlier Friday, the FBI said it has enough information to confirm that North Korea was behind the hacking of Sony Pictures.</p><p>The agency tied the attack to North Korea because the malware used in the attack had the hallmarks of software written by the country in the past.</p><p>&quot;For example, there were similarities in specific lines of code, encryption algorithms, data deletion methods, and compromised networks,&quot; the FBI said in a statement.</p><p>The tools used, the agency said, also had similarities to a cyberattack that took place in March of last year against banks in South Korea.</p><p>The hack has caused serious repercussions for Sony. The stolen data have made public some embarrassing emails written by its executives. Hackers also leaked unreleased movies and scripts.</p><p>The group that took responsibility for the attack, &quot;Guardians of Peace,&quot; said it was responding to Sony Pictures&#39; comedy about an assassination plot against North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.</p><p>After the group issued threats to attack movie theaters that show the film, major movie chains pulled&nbsp;The Interview&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/12/17/371477960/major-theater-chains-wont-screen-the-interview-amid-threats">Sony decided against a Christmas Day release</a>.</p><p>&quot;We are deeply concerned about the destructive nature of this attack on a private-sector entity and the ordinary citizens who worked there,&quot; the FBI said. &quot;Further, North Korea&#39;s attack on [Sony] reaffirms that cyber threats pose one of the gravest national security dangers to the United States.&quot;</p><p>In a separate statement, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said the hack &quot;underscores the importance of good cybersecurity practices to rapidly detect cyber intrusions and promote resilience throughout all of our networks.</p><p>&quot;Every CEO should take this opportunity to assess their company&#39;s cybersecurity,&quot; he added.</p><p>Immediately following the FBI announcement, the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., criticized the White House for not imposing tough financial sanctions on North Korea.</p><p>&quot;North Korea is attacking our infrastructure,&quot; Royce said in a statement. &quot;It is also attacking our values. The decision to pull &#39;The Interview&#39; from theatres unfortunately is a North Korean victory in its attack on our freedom. We better quickly respond comprehensively to defend freedom of speech in the face of terrorist threats and cyber attacks.&quot;</p><p>Options, though, are limited. The U.S. could impose new financial sanctions on Pyongyang and boost military support to South Korea. Yet these moves have had little impact on the heavily sanctioned country in the past.</p><p><a href="http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/19/media/insde-sony-hack-interview/index.html?hpt=hp_t1">CNN reported earlier today</a>&nbsp;that the hackers behind the attack issued another statement today, praising Sony for pulling the movie. Removing it from screens, the hackers said in an email to Sony executives, was a &quot;very wise&quot; decision.</p><p>&mdash; <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/12/19/371894427/fbi-formally-accuses-north-korea-in-sony-hacking"><em>via NPR</em></a></p></p>Fri, 19 Dec 2014 14:14:00 -0600http://www.wbez.org/news/culture/obama-says-sony-should-not-have-pulled-film-over-hacking-111277With Sony hack, nation-state attacks go from quiet to overthttp://www.wbez.org/news/culture/sony-hack-nation-state-attacks-go-quiet-overt-111264
<img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://llnw.wbez.org/main-images/AP809914660283.jpg" alt="" /><p><p>NPR has confirmed from U.S. intelligence officials that North Korea was centrally involved with the recent attacks against Sony Pictures. And the company says it is pulling its comedy film The Interview from the box office. It was supposed to debut on Christmas. These are major developments in what we may now call cyberwarfare.</p><p>The White House hasn&#39;t come out and said it yet, but intelligence officials tell us that the North Korean government was in fact involved in this hack against Sony, where everything from social security numbers to executive salaries and celebrity gossip got leaked.</p><p>Yes, it&#39;s the confirmation that many people have been waiting for. Though it&#39;s also really important to note that we don&#39;t exactly know what that means &mdash; and I&#39;ve spoken with security experts who remain skeptical.</p><p>That said, if it&#39;s true, it really is extraordinary. North Korea is one of the poorest countries on Earth. Its people don&#39;t go online &mdash; they&#39;re cut off from the Internet. But its government has allegedly launched an overt cyberattack &mdash; and even secured a decisive victory &mdash; against one of the biggest companies on Earth.</p><p>Repeat: overt.</p><p>That&#39;s a key part here &mdash; the fact that you and I and everyone else knows about it.</p><p>I want to compare this with another cyberattack &mdash; one that was carried out by nation-state actors: Stuxnet in 2010. That&#39;s when the U.S. and Israel used some very sophisticated code to dig their way into nuclear facilities in Iran and damage the actual physical centrifuges.</p><p>In that case, the hackers caused physical damage in the real world &mdash; but they did it covertly. While the news eventually broke, it&#39;s not like the U.S. was sending out press releases.</p><p>In this case, the hackers &mdash; who might be North Korean officials or backed by the regime &mdash; have been very vocal from the get. Using the name &quot;Guardians of Peace,&quot; they&#39;ve even threatened to hurt people who go to see the movie in theaters.</p><p>Theater chains that were supposed to screen The Interview decided not to, and Sony canceled the Christmas Day release.</p><p>So, effectively, the hackers grabbed a ton of attention through an online attack &mdash; one that was nowhere near as sophisticated as Stuxnet. And they leveraged all that attention, that power, to pivot &mdash; and make a physical threat that people suddenly felt was credible.</p><p>This whole chain of events has experts inside the cybersecurity industry really concerned. I talked to a few people whose job it is to ward off these kinds of attacks. And they have different takes on whether Sony, by caving, made the right decision for itself.</p><p>But across the board, they&#39;re worried that the company is sending the wrong message by handing off a huge win to a disgruntled state with very limited resources.</p><p>So the concern is that we&#39;re going to see copycats or a new trend on the horizon.</p><p>Cyberattacks happen every day. At this point, they&#39;re nothing new.</p><p>I was talking to this one security expert in Moscow, who pointed out that during the height of tensions between Russia and Ukraine, there were plenty of cyberattacks &mdash; online skirmishes with one side taking down the other side&#39;s media outlet or defacing websites.</p><p>Now this Sony episode is showing what a disproportionate impact a small, angry entity can have &mdash; and how an attack online can spill over to physical-world consequences.</p><p>&mdash; <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/12/18/371581401/with-sony-hack-nation-state-attacks-go-from-quiet-to-overt" target="_blank"><em>via NPR</em></a></p></p>Thu, 18 Dec 2014 14:34:00 -0600http://www.wbez.org/news/culture/sony-hack-nation-state-attacks-go-quiet-overt-111264Aaliyah deserves better than her Lifetime biopichttp://www.wbez.org/blogs/jim-derogatis/2014-11/aaliyah-deserves-better-her-lifetime-biopic-111082
<p><div class="image-insert-image " style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" class="image-original_image" src="http://www.wbez.org/system/files/styles/original_image/llo/insert-images/mgid_uma_video_mtv.com_1097146.jpg" style="height: 349px; width: 620px;" title="Alexandra Shipp as Aaliyah with Clé Bennett as R. Kelly (Lifetime)." /></div><p>We might expect a considerable number of flaws from an unauthorized biopic crafted on the cheap for Lifetime, the Hearst- and Disney-owned cable TV channel that once branded itself as &ldquo;Television for Women.&rdquo;</p><p>But Aaliyah Dana Haughton, one of the most distinctive voices in R&amp;B in the last two decades, deserves much better than bargain-basement production values, wooden acting, a dismal soundtrack faking tunes that are no substitute for her own music, and a script that ignores many of the key facts in her story.</p><p>Most importantly, the many fans for whom she was and is a role model for self-empowerment deserve better than the sanitized, soft-pedaled version of her disturbing sexual relationship with Chicago producer R. Kelly when she was 14 and he was 27&mdash;a coupling that court documents annulling their brief and illegal marriage and interviews with people close to the ingénue portray as one of abuse and victimization, far from the &ldquo;puppy love&rdquo; seen in <em>Aaliyah: The Princess of R&amp;B</em>.</p><p>The Lifetime film, which debuts on Saturday, has been controversial from the beginning. Aaliyah&rsquo;s family never gave the project its blessing (they&rsquo;re planning an alternate big-screen take), and the first actress cast for the starring role, the Disney Channel star Zendaya, dropped out of what <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/entertainment/2014/07/zendaya-coleman-explains-exit-from-aalyiah-biopic/">she called a shoddy production</a>. The movie&rsquo;s future was in question until Alexandra Shipp (<em>House of Anubis</em>) signed on as Aaliyah and gossipy talk-show host Wendy Williams joined as executive producer, shepherding the movie to completion.</p><p>Williams spent a lot of time jawing about the Aaliyah/Kelly controversy in her days on talk radio, and <a>she has said she pushed for the &ldquo;true&rdquo; story to be told in the film</a>: &ldquo;The Aaliyah movie was already being produced and&hellip; they were doing things wrong. I was like, &lsquo;Look, if you&rsquo;re going to make this Aaliyah movie, you gotta get it right, Lifetime. I love you, you&rsquo;re good at wives who stab their husbands movies, but you gotta get this Aaliyah movie right.&rsquo; I was very popular on the radio for Aaliyah&rsquo;s rise and untimely death. I want to hear about R. Kelly&hellip; Don&rsquo;t skate over it. This needs to be a big plot line.&rdquo;</p><p>The film doesn&rsquo;t &ldquo;skate over&rdquo; relations between the &ldquo;street but sweet&rdquo; young singer and the self-proclaimed &ldquo;Pied Pier of R&amp;B&rdquo;; it spends half its length taking Aaliyah from Catholic grammar school girl, to ambitious student at Detroit&rsquo;s High School for the Fine and Performing Arts, to stardom and platinum success following her 1994 Kelly-produced debut<em>.</em> (That ascension is overseen by her uncle and Kelly&rsquo;s manager Barry Hankerson, played by Lyriq Bent, a veteran of several <em>Saw </em>films.) But the well-established truth of what happened between Kelly and Aaliyah is almost entirely missing on screen.</p><p>Working from the flimsy 2002 book <em>Aaliyah: More Than a Woman </em>by Christopher John Farley, Williams, screenwriter Michael Elliot (<em>Brown Sugar</em>), and director Bradley Walsh (whose credits include episodes of<em> Beauty and the Beast </em>and <em>The Listener</em>) give us a guileless ingénue in Shipp as Aaliyah, and she promptly develops a schoolgirl crush on her producer. For his part, Clé Bennett (<em>Rookie Blue</em>) plays Kelly as an innocent charmer from humble beginnings who falls deeply in love with his earnest young protégé, perhaps because he sees something of his beloved mother in her when they share a Chicago-style pizza after recording.</p><p>The fictionalized couple secretly marries, but when they travel to Detroit to break the news to Aaliyah&rsquo;s parents in her childhood home, her father&mdash;Sterling Jarvis playing the kind of dad who takes a sugary soft drink out of his kid&rsquo;s hand and proffers an apple instead&mdash;says they must annul the union immediately, lest he ask the police to charge Kelly with statutory rape. (At the time of the marriage, she was still 15, nearly half Kelly&rsquo;s age). With heavy hearts, the couple separates, never to speak again, while Aaliyah pouts for more than five years about the loss of her first &ldquo;true love.&rdquo;</p><p>The artistic triumph of Aaliyah&rsquo;s second, Timbaland and Missy Elliott-produced album and the promising start of an acting career that would have seen her appear in the two sequels to <em>The</em> <em>Matrix </em>barely lift her spirits. She&rsquo;s finally buoyed a bit when she begins dating hip-hop entrepreneur Damon Dash. Then, tragically, she dies at age 22 in a plane crash in the Bahamas, on Aug. 25, 2001.</p><div class="image-insert-image " style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" class="image-original_image" src="http://www.wbez.org/system/files/styles/original_image/llo/insert-images/Aaliyah-r-kelly.jpg" title="The real Aaliyah with R. Kelly (WBEZ file)." /></div><p>This version of events with Kelly at the center of the film is deeply offensive not only as a hoary &ldquo;frustrated lovers&rdquo;/Romeo and Juliet cliché, but as a flagrant whitewashing of criminal sexual abuse. As Abdon M. Pallasch and I laid out in a series of unchallenged investigative reports for <em>The Chicago Sun-Times </em>spanning several years, and as I recounted in <a href="http://www.wbez.org/blogs/jim-derogatis/2013-07/timeline-life-and-career-r-kelly-107973">a much-cited timeline of Kelly&rsquo;s crimes for WBEZ.org in July 2013</a>, these are the facts:</p><ul><li>When Kelly first met Aaliyah, she was 12, and he already was widely rumored in the music industry to &ldquo;like them young,&rdquo; abusing his position of wealth and fame to pursue illegal sexual relationships with underage girls.</li><li>According to a civil lawsuit filed in 1996, which he eventually settled with a cash payment, Kelly had already had at least two sexual relationships with underage girls, one 15 and the other 16, in the years before he met Aaliyah. One of those girls slit her wrists when Kelly ended the relationship and began sleeping with the then-14-year-old Aaliyah, as well as writing and producing her debut album, which he titled <em>Age Ain&rsquo;t Nothing But A Number</em>.</li><li>Shortly after the album&rsquo;s completion, on Aug. 31, 1994, Kelly married the now-15-year-old Aaliyah at the Sheraton Gateway Suites in suburban Rosemont, having procured a falsified Cook County marriage certificate listing her age as 18. Some sources have said Aaliyah was pregnant. The singer&rsquo;s family, including a furious Hankerson, separated the couple as soon as they stepped off a plane in Florida for their honeymoon, and Kelly and Aaliyah never spoke again. (Aaliyah did not have a child.)</li><li>In October 1994, the marriage was annulled in Detroit and lawyers for both sides reached a settlement that was sealed in Wayne County Circuit Court, though a copy was obtained by the<em> Sun-Times</em>. The court documents provided a nominal payment of $100 from Kelly to Aaliyah, with Aaliyah promising not to pursue further legal action because of <strong>&ldquo;emotional distress caused by any aspect of her business or personal relationship with Robert&rdquo;</strong> or <strong>&ldquo;physical injury or emotional pain and suffering arising from any assault or battery perpetrated by Robert against her person.&rdquo;</strong></li></ul><p>That language alone indicates that the relationship was far from innocent, but years later, Aaliyah&rsquo;s mother told the <em>Sun-Times</em>: &ldquo;Everything that went wrong in her life began then [with the relationship with Kelly].&rdquo; And while Hankerson did not split with Kelly until more than five years after the marriage, and he&rsquo;s never spoken about what happened between his niece and Kelly on the record, his attorney did share with the <em>Sun-Times </em>a letter that he sent to Kelly&rsquo;s attorney. In it, Hankerson stated that he believed Kelly needed psychiatric help for a compulsion to pursue underage girls, and that Hankerson was in denial about that even after Kelly seduced Aaliyah because he didn&rsquo;t want to believe the worst and Kelly was a master manipulator.</p><p>None of the facts above appear in <em>Aaliyah: The Princess of R&amp;B, </em>nor is there any hint that Kelly became the subject of dozens of legal claims from underage girls just like Aaliyah charging that they had been hurt by illegal sexual relationships with him. Also missing: The fact that Kelly was tried and acquitted in 2008 on charges of making child pornography in a notorious video that allegedly depicts him having sex with and urinating on a girl who was 14 or 15 at the time.</p><p>To be certain, many of the specifics of the Kelly/Aaliyah relationship remain a mystery, and neither side is eager to address them. But the facts that <em>have</em> been well-reported make the story even more dramatic: Aaliyah had the strength and the support system to recover from her relationship with Kelly and record two more brilliant albums (<em>One in a Million </em>in 1996 and the self-titled <em>Aaliyah </em>in 2001), as well as making significant inroads as a leading woman on screen even in the face of Hollywood&rsquo;s aversion to African-American leads.</p><p>More significantly, with the false and phony version of the relationship presented in <em>Aaliyah: The Princess of R&amp;B</em>, Lifetime, Williams, and everyone involved with the film missed the opportunity to provide a stark example and a cautionary tale of how even smart, strong, and self-assured young girls can be victimized by older sexual predators, especially if those men are rich and famous.</p><p>In this way, the cycle of sexual predation is perpetuated, and it&rsquo;s hard to imagine a greater insult to Aaliyah&rsquo;s legacy than that.</p><div style="background-color:#000000;width:520px;"><div style="padding: 4px; text-align: justify;"><iframe align="middle" frameborder="0" height="288" scrolling="no" src="http://media.mtvnservices.com/embed/mgid:uma:video:vh1.com:1097146/cp~id%3D1732368%26vid%3D1097146%26uri%3Dmgid%3Auma%3Avideo%3Avh1.com%3A1097146" width="512"></iframe></div></div><p>&nbsp;</p><p><em><strong>Follow me on Twitter </strong></em><a href="https://twitter.com/JimDeRogatis"><strong><em><strike>@</strike>JimDeRogatis</em></strong></a><em><strong>, join me on </strong></em><a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jim-DeRo/254753087340"><strong><em>Facebook</em></strong></a><em><strong>, and podcast </strong></em><a href="http://www.soundopinions.org/"><strong>Sound Opinions</strong></a><em><strong>.</strong></em></p></p>Mon, 10 Nov 2014 07:30:00 -0600http://www.wbez.org/blogs/jim-derogatis/2014-11/aaliyah-deserves-better-her-lifetime-biopic-111082Lucas chooses Chicago for his art, memorabilia museumhttp://www.wbez.org/news/culture/lucas-chooses-chicago-his-art-memorabilia-museum-110405
<p><p>Get your lightsabers ready: The George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is coming to Chicago.</p><p>George Lucas and the museum board announced Tuesday they had chosen Chicago as the home for the museum, beating out San Francisco and Los Angeles.</p><p>It all started more than four years ago, in a galaxy far, far away -- also known as George Lucas&rsquo; home of San Francisco. Lucas&rsquo; originally wanted to build his museum for art and movie memorabilia at Crissy Field, land owned by the Presidio Trust. But when his plans were rejected earlier this year, he began looking into other options.</p><p>In a statement, the Lucas Museum board says Chicago&rsquo;s proposed site by Soldier Field was &ldquo;significantly larger&rdquo; and closer to public transportation than the sites San Francisco was offering. The board also lauded Chicago&rsquo;s museum campus - the proposed site for the museum - as &ldquo;vibrant,&rdquo; and &ldquo;centrally located in a city renowned for its love of art and architecture.&rdquo;</p><p>Though he&rsquo;s from California, Lucas has his own personal connections to Chicago. Lucas&rsquo; wife, Mellody Hobson, is a prominent businesswoman from Chicago. The couple celebrated their wedding at Promontory Point along the Lake Michigan shore. The city closed down the entire park for the event.</p><p>Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been lobbying for major cultural institutions to move to or take root in Chicago. A mayoral-appointed task force last month recommended the Lucas museum be built along the lakefront, in the now-parking lots between Soldier Field and McCormick Place</p><p>Emanuel called landing the Lucas Museum a &ldquo;tremendous opportunity&rdquo; for the city. He&rsquo;s said in the past taxpayers wouldn&rsquo;t be footing the bill for the billion-dollar investment.</p><p>The mayor has also attempted to assure Bears fans that the Lucas museum won&rsquo;t keep them from tailgating before home games. Last month, he told reporters at an unrelated event that &ldquo;there&rsquo;s going to be tailgating. Full stop.&rdquo;</p><p>&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t thank George and Mellody enough,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;No other major American city has these type of cultural education institutions, with a great Northerly Island creating a vibrant, green museum campus - unparalleled in the United States.&rdquo;</p><p>In a statement, George Lucas says Chicago is the right decision for the museum, but the Bay area will always be his home.</p><p><em>Lauren Chooljian is a WBEZ Reporter. Follow her </em><a href="https://twitter.com/laurenchooljian"><em>@laurenchooljian</em></a></p></p>Wed, 25 Jun 2014 07:54:00 -0500http://www.wbez.org/news/culture/lucas-chooses-chicago-his-art-memorabilia-museum-110405Long-forgotten landscape architect helped save the Indiana Duneshttp://www.wbez.org/news/culture/long-forgotten-landscape-architect-helped-save-indiana-dunes-110378
<p><p><img alt="" class="image-original_image" src="http://www.wbez.org/system/files/styles/original_image/llo/insert-images/Jens%20Jensen%201.jpg" style="float: left; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px;" title="Danish-born Jens Jensen helped develop Chicago’s park system. He’s also credited with helping preserve much of the Indiana Dunes. (Photo provided by Carey Lundin)" />As the temperature rises, thousands will be flocking to the <a href="http://www.indianadunes.com/" target="_blank">Indiana Dunes</a> this summer. But if it weren&rsquo;t for a little-known landscape architect, the miles of beaches along southern Lake Michigan might not exist today.</p><p>Jens Jensen first became known for his pioneering work on Chicago&rsquo;s park system a century ago. The new documentary <a href="http://www.jensjensenthelivinggreen.org/" target="_blank"><em>Jens Jensen, the Living Green</em></a> also shows his role in saving the Indiana Dunes from industrial destruction.&nbsp;</p><p>WBEZ&rsquo;s Michael Puente recently sat down with the film&rsquo;s director Carey Lundin. She began by talking about how the Danish-born Jensen first ended up in Chicago.</p><div class="image-insert-image "><img alt="" class="image-original_image" src="http://llnw.wbez.org/styles/original_image/llo/insert-images/Jens Jensen 2.jpg" style="margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: 5px; height: 496px; width: 620px;" title="Carey Lundin (middle) on location shooting the documentary Jens Jensen The Living Green. (Photo provided by Carey Lundin)" /></div><div class="image-insert-image "><em>Carey Lundin (middle) on location shooting the documentary Jens Jensen The Living Green. (Photo provided by Carey Lundin)</em></div><p>&nbsp;</p></p>Thu, 19 Jun 2014 15:35:00 -0500http://www.wbez.org/news/culture/long-forgotten-landscape-architect-helped-save-indiana-dunes-110378Cinespace Chicago: Hollywood of the Midwest?http://www.wbez.org/blogs/alison-cuddy/2014-03/cinespace-chicago-hollywood-midwest-109789
<p><p>Life on a television soundstage is a mixture of glamor and grit. Or at least that&rsquo;s the case with Chicago Fire, an NBC series that&rsquo;s been shooting in Chicago the past two years.</p><p>The day I visit, the cast and crew are shooting a scene for an episode that will likely air in March. The set&rsquo;s designed to look like a firehouse break room.</p><p>Actors like Eamonn Walker and David Eigenberg stroll by, impeccably made up for their scene.</p><p>But they also jostle and joke around with the crew. Eigenberg (who played Steve, the sweet and mild love interest of Miranda on Sex and the City) swears a blue streak.</p><p>Director Sanford Bookstaver, after some prodding from his assistant director, calls &ldquo;Action!&rdquo; Everyone hits their marks, again and again.</p><p>Other than some barely contained hilarity around a prop (which I can&rsquo;t reveal: this episode hasn&rsquo;t aired so no spoilers allowed), it&rsquo;s all business.</p><p>Chicago Fire itself has apparently been good business for our local film economy.</p><p>Gov. Pat Quinn said the series is a big reason that local media production has broken records over the past two years.</p><p>Bookstaver predicts even bigger revenues. The L.A.-based director has been here 4 times recently, to direct episodes of Chicago Fire and the spin-off series Chicago PD. He said film could be a trigger for economic growth in Chicago. New production facilities, followed by hotels. A whole Hollywood scene, like the kind that grew in Vancouver.</p><p>&ldquo;I think it would be very nice to have a Hollywood Midwest as well,&rdquo; said Bookstaver, &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;</p><p>Why not?</p><p>Well, for starters, Illinois&rsquo; film economy is still pretty small. The state estimates total spending in 2013 was around $350 million. Some of that is the result of a tax credit the state legislature approved back in 2004.</p><p>Back then a good year was about $23 million. Now producers shooting here can earn up to 30 percent &nbsp;in tax credits for money they spend locally - to buy goods and services or to hire crew.</p><p>The credits, plus Chicago&rsquo;s reputation for authentic locations, plus talented crews, brought more business. But it wasn&rsquo;t enough. What we needed was a place - somewhere film producers could call home. That turned out to be <a href="http://www.chicagofilmstudios.com/">Cinespace Chicago Film Studios</a> &nbsp;in Chicago&rsquo;s North Lawndale neighborhood.</p><div class="image-insert-image "><img alt="" class="image-original_image" src="http://www.wbez.org/system/files/styles/original_image/llo/insert-images/photo3_web.jpg" style="margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: 5px;" title="Cinespace Chicago Film Studios. The state of Illinois ponied up $5 million to turn an old steel plant into a huge soundstage facility. (WBEZ/Alison Cuddy)" /></div><p>Alex Pissios is a Chicago native and president of Cinespace Chicago.</p><p>He gave me a tour of his massive facility, which sprawls across almost 50 acres on the city&rsquo;s West Side. The space is cavernous, with 45-foot-high ceilings.</p><p>Right now it houses 18 stages, including two used by Chicago Fire. Other productions that are filming or have filmed there include television shows like Chicago PD, Mind Games, Crisis as well as big films like Transformers 4 and Divergent.</p><p>Pissios says they have plans to build 12 more sound stages, including a water stage that will be constructed this spring.</p><p>Cinespace Chicago was originally developed by Pissios&rsquo; uncle Nick Mirkopolous, who died late last year.</p><p>Mirkopolous, a Greek-Canadian, had a track record building sound stages in Toronto and elsewhere. But Pissios said the way his uncle got locals, like former Mayor Richard M. Daley, on board was by being blunt.</p><p>&ldquo;He said LA is prostituting your city,&rdquo; recalled Pissios. &ldquo;They come in, shoot your beautiful location, then they leave and spend the real money in other cities.&rdquo;</p><p>Apparently that message hit home. The state gave Cinespace $5 million to get started. <a href="http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/dcd/provdrs/ec_dev/news/2013/sep/tax_incentive_wouldsupportsouthwestsidefilmproductionstudio.html">And the city ponied up a property tax break</a>, estimated to be worth $3.5 million over the next 12 years.</p><p>Pissios says that&rsquo;s public money well spent. Business follows it, like television series and commercial work. The day I toured, a Chevy ad starring Chicago Blackhawks Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane was shooting.</p><p>And the producers from L.A. keep coming.</p><p>&ldquo;They&rsquo;re like cockroaches, they find space, they love the space,&rdquo; said Pissios. &ldquo;A lot of location shooting is done on the 50 acres, and that&rsquo;s a big, big thing for them, because that means they don&rsquo;t have to go somewhere, close a street down, move their caterers, move their Teamsters, move their workers, move their actors.&rdquo;</p><p>Pissios wouldn&rsquo;t say whether Cinespace Chicago is making a profit yet. And trying to figure out if the state has seen a return on its investment is complicated.</p><p>Dave Roeder, a spokesperson for the <a href="http://www.illinois.gov/dceo/Pages/default.aspx">Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity</a> (which includes the Illinois Film Office) says the film industry generated $1.3 billion in spending between 2005-2008. Over that same time, the state gave out $201 million in tax credits, although that figure could be higher by as much as $100 million, since production companies have two years to claim their credits.</p><p>When I asked how much of that spending actually flows into state coffers, Roeder did not have a ready answer. Like other state officials I spoke with, he stressed that without a tax credit, Illinois would likely have seen far less film production over the past decade.</p><p>As for how the state makes up the potential loss of hundreds of millions in tax revenue due to the film production credit, Roeder said &nbsp;it would be &ldquo;made up elsewhere, by any other revenue generating items.&rdquo;</p><p><a href="http://evanston.patch.com/groups/politics-and-elections/p/illinois-film-tax-credits-bought-by-producers-paid-for-by-taxpayers">Complicating this scenario is who actually winds up getting the tax credit</a>. Film productions don&rsquo;t necessarily rack up a big tax liability when shooting. No loss - they can sell their credits - legally - to other corporate entities. And according to Roeder &ldquo;a great many do,&rdquo; often to big retailers.</p><p>&ldquo;To us, it&rsquo;s immaterial, it doesn&rsquo;t increase the liability,&rdquo; said Roeder. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a private market transaction.&rdquo;</p><p>But many critics say there is a long-term liability to states, even if they don&rsquo;t realize it.</p><p>Robert Tannenwald is an economist based in Boston, who has spent close to 30 years looking at local incentives for film. He says tax credits don&rsquo;t work. They don&rsquo;t generate enough economic activity to offset their cost. And they don&rsquo;t always work to sustain a film industry.</p><p>&ldquo;The film industry is so footloose and in need of such subsidization because it&rsquo;s so risky,&rdquo; said Tannenwalk. &ldquo;So it will simply go where it can get the biggest subsidy. Lots of states have sound studios and subsidies &ndash; <a href="http://variety.com/2012/film/news/new-mexico-film-hot-spot-on-the-mend-1118057060/">they weren&rsquo;t enough to hold the industry.&rdquo;</a></p><p>And - helping out the film industry usually leads to short changes in other sectors. Maybe education gets less aid. Teachers get laid off. Then, they stop spending money.</p><p>So given those odds, why would a state subsidize &nbsp;the film industry?</p><p>Tannenwald says <a href="http://www.ncsl.org/research/fiscal-policy/state-film-production-incentives-and-programs.aspx">because all the other states do.</a> But following suit puts them in what he calls competitive purgatory.</p><p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s why I think that the idea of creating a media cluster, a Hollywood Midwest is a really long-shot bet,&rdquo; said Tannenwald. &ldquo;And in my opinion, though I&rsquo;m not a resident or a voter in Illinois, I wouldn&rsquo;t be taking those bets right now.&rdquo;</p><p>Tannenwald says the best measures for whether or not tax incentives work is to analyze them - the way the Massachusetts Department of Revenue does its state film tax incentives.</p><p>Another measure is to ask how many jobs are created. Again, that&rsquo;s hard to assess. Jobs in the film industry are contract-based - people work as long as films or series or commercials are shooting. The state calls them &nbsp;&ldquo;full time equivalent&rdquo; or FTE jobs because they&rsquo;re union gigs that come with good pay and benefits. But the county varies from year to year, from more than 8,000 hires in 2010 to 4,200 last year.</p><p><a href="https://www.worldbusinesschicago.com/news/hollywood-in-the-midwest">If Chicago is intent on becoming the Hollywood of the Midwest</a> it wouldn&rsquo;t be the first. Michigan, Iowa, Ohio, Wisconsin - even Kankakee in downstate Illinois - have all set their sights on building a film industry. And some have failed, spectacularly.</p><p>But all of these questions and concerns around the economics of film don&rsquo;t deters Alex Pissios.</p><p>Back at Cinespace, he&rsquo;s hatching big plans. He wants to turn his campus into an enclosed backlot, along the lines of Universal Studios. He&rsquo;ll have architects create facades that replicate streets and buildings in New York or London. He thinks that will make Chicago even more attractive to film producers.</p><p>And the payoff?</p><p>&ldquo;How many businesses come in with a suitcase of 50, 60 million dollars and say&lsquo;&rsquo;We&rsquo;re going to spend this in your state-- now. It&rsquo;s going to be impacted-- now,&rdquo; said Pissios. &ldquo;Not six years down the line. People don&rsquo;t realize the amount of money being spent when these productions come in.. It&rsquo;s unbelievable.&rdquo;</p><p>And right now, at least in Illinois, those short term gains are winning out.<a name="playlist"></a></p><p><iframe frameborder="no" height="450" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/playlists/25080645&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_artwork=true" width="100%"></iframe></p><div><em><a href="http://www.wbez.org/users/acuddy-0">Alison Cuddy</a> is the Arts and Culture reporter at WBEZ. You can follow her on&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/wbezacuddy">Twitter</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/cuddyalison">Facebook</a> and&nbsp;<a href="http://http://instagram.com/cuddyreport">Instagram</a>.</em></div></p>Fri, 28 Feb 2014 09:20:00 -0600http://www.wbez.org/blogs/alison-cuddy/2014-03/cinespace-chicago-hollywood-midwest-109789